A Time of Tigers - From Peasant to Emperor-Chapter 1148 Equal Scales - Part 3
1148: Equal Scales – Part 3
1148: Equal Scales – Part 3
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On the third day of Karstly’s arrival, he could find no openings.
Khan took twenty thousand men, and he sent them from his unit for the express purpose of keeping Karstly in check.
It slowed his own attacking progression, but at least with it, they could allow all three armies to still continually attack.
Wherever Karstly moved, those twenty thousand men would be moved ever so carefully as well.
Khan gave Karstly his attention – or at least half of it – and continually, he kept the man in check, creating a brick wall that was all but impassable for him.
And then, as inevitable as it was, the first chunk of true irreparable stone fell down from the central castle.
A hole was opened up in it, as big as three men, and a great gap was to be seen through it.
The Stormfront men on the inside peered out, with shock written all over their faces.
To them, it seemed very much like a mark of the end.
Even to Blackwell, it seemed just as much true.
They couldn’t allow their situation to stagnate as it was.
Karstly continually harried Khan, making him move his men, even if he couldn’t break through, but that alone wasn’t enough.
Blackwell could almost hear the young General shouting that the ball was in his court, and it was up to him to decide how to proceed next.
“Damn it all, this should have been a far slower battle than this,” Blackwell said, but both he and Khan had been infected by Karstly’s eagerness, and they had to match his pace if they didn’t want to be swept away by it.
Blackwell had kept his men well at bay for all his days of defence.
They’d done nothing more than protect the walls on which they stood.
They’d cut down the men and the ladders that came with them, and they’d fired arrows upon the enemies that charged.
Now the numbers coming their way were lesser, even if the siege weapons were relentless, and with those lesser numbers, Blackwell could begin to see a slight opening of maneuverability.
He saw an option in front of him, and he debated whether to put it into play.
He was not a man that tended towards gambles such as this.
If he’d known the troops that he’d governed just a degree better, and if he’d known Karstly better too, he might have been firmer in his decision… But this was a gamble regardless, and he hardly dared to take it.
He scratched at his beard, his expression hard.
The only move that he could really make, was whether or not to set his men outside their castles.
Only then, could he begin to employ more complicated strategies.
Right there, in that instant, his only true enemy was an enemy of timing… And timing seemed to be well on the side of General Khan.
“Damn it all,” General Blackwell said.
“Get the message to General Broadstone.
Karstly sowed the seeds of weakness in that left army the day before… We’ll have him put even more pressure on.”
There were other preparations the man needed to make too, but those were the sorts of preparations that he spoke in a whisper, so that not even the soldiers that guarded him from behind could not hear it.
Only the officers who he trusted most were allowed a chance at deciphering those words.
Now, General Blackwell could not deny it – the easy campaign that he had hoped for into the Verna was not to be forthcoming.
It was a brutal and long war that they were being forced to engage in.
And a strategist could not hope to win such a war whilst retaining hold of all of his pieces.
Without a single interlude, Khan’s contraptions continued to fire their horrific bombardment on the central castle.
One would never have thought that such castles had once belonged to the Verna with the way that he treated them.
He seemed more inclined to destroy them than he did to capture them.
With every fifth shot that landed, more bricks fell, and holes widened within the round walls.
Had they been flat walls, those siege weapons would have caused even more damage than they already had, Blackwell thought.
It was only here that they were allowed to use the Verna’s own technology against them.
Karstly struggled to find his openings, but there were none forthcoming.
The brief period of unrest that he had managed to cause by his arrival had passed.
In response, Khan now had the battlefield entirely locked down.
It was entirely his domain.
Any movements that Karstly was to make would now come at a significant cost.
It did not help that the sun was beating down something fierce from overhead.
The days seemed to be growing hotter.
As Karstly’s men were made to wait on the edge of the battlefield, they felt that hot sun draining their energy all the more.
It heated up the links of their chainmail, and even managed to pass its way through their thick padded undershirts, filling them with an unbelievable heat that seemed to have no prospects of escape.
The Stormfront men were entirely drenched in sweat.
Those soldiers that defended the tops of the castle walls found themselves in no different a state.
By contrast, the Verna men seemed nearly unmoved.
Those that were standing sentry awaiting their orders betrayed no hints of their discomfort.
Their long flowing robes, with their wide sleeves and their colourful shades were met with envious glances from the Stormfront men.
The thinness of the fabric seemed likely to be awfully cool, and from the nonplussed expressions on the waiting Verna men, it must have been.
“To be forced to wait like this…” Oliver murmured.
He found himself eyeing the enemy formations, wishing that he could do more.
They looked awfully vulnerable the way they were placed, most with their backs turned to them.
They were positioned almost as if inviting an attack.
If he looked at them through the eyes of the bloodthirsty soldier, he couldn’t fathom why they weren’t moving forwards, and slicing them to pieces.
It was only when he zoomed out every so slightly and looked at the battlefield from the perspective of a strategist that he thought himself beginning to understand.
Even there, there were certain positions that they didn’t seem to take advantage of, when it seemed that they could.
